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Books of the week — Off with her head!

08 Friday Feb 2019

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“The Queene of Scotland is your prisoner, let her be honorably entreated, but yet surely guarded.” – William Parry

A true and plaine declaration of the horrible…
At London by C. Barker Cum priuilegio, 1585
First edition, second issue

A contemporary report of William Parry’s plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), including an account of his discovery, imprisonment, confession, and execution (2 March 1585) together with documents of the confession of Parry’s fellow-conspirator, Edmund Neville (ca. 1555-ca. 1620), outlining in detail Parry’s plans to kill Elizabeth with his dagger in her private gardens or, failing that, to shoot her at St James’; and Parry’s confession, written by his own hand before Walsingham in the Tower of London.

This is followed by two more letters of confession by Parry, the first addressed to the queen; the next addressed to Burghley and the Earl of Leicester. Also included are documents that further incriminate Parry and provide details of the early stages of his plotting. The first of these is a letter written by the Jesuit William Crichton (from his imprisonment at the Tower) recalling a conversation with Parry concerning the lawfulness of assassinating the queen.

Finally, a letter to Parry by Ptolomeo Galli, Cardinal of Como, in which he approves a letter that Parry had written to Pope Pius V, allegedly offering to assassinate the queen, and for which service the Pope granted him a plenary indulgence. Following the account of Parry’s trial and execution by hanging, the printer has added “A few observations gathered out of the very words and writing of William Parry, the traytour, applied to prove his trayterous coniuration, with a resolute intent, imagination, purpose, and obstinate determination to have killed her Maiestie.” This account of Parry’s efforts implicates the Jesuits, English recusants and seminarians, and the Pope himself.


“But the matter is cleare, the conspiracie, and his traiterous intent it too plaine and evident: it is the Lorde that reuealed it in time, and preuented their malice: there lacked no wil, or readinesse in him to execute that horrible fact. It is the Lorde that hath preserued her Maiestie from all the wicked practises and conspiracies of that hellish rable: it is hee that hath most graciously deliuered her from the hands of this traiterous miscreant. The Lord is her onely defence in whome shee hath alwayes trusted.”

The revelation that Parry conceived of his plan by reading the works of William Allen, English Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, prompted this editorial note: “See how the smoothe words of that Catholique booke are enterpreted and conceived. One Spirite occupieth the Catholique reader with the Catholique writer, and therefore can best expound the writers sence in his readers mouth, even to bee a booke fraught with emphaticall speeches of energeticall perswasion to kill and despose her maiestie, and yet doeth the hypocrite writer, that traitour Catholique, dissemble and protest otherwise.”

The little booklet ends with three prayers for Elizabeth, the last of which “vsed in the Parliament onely.”


“…we gladly acknowledge, that by thy fauour standeth the peaceable protection of our Queene and Realme, and likewise this fauorable libertie graunted unto us at this time to make our meeting together…”


Copie of a letter to the right honourable the…
London: By Christopher Barker, printer to the Queenes most excellent Maiestie, 1586
First edition, variant
DA356 S27 1586

This slim volume contains printed documents of an exchange between Parliament and Queen Elizabeth on the proposed execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, beginning with a letter to the Earl of Leicester dated November 25th, 1586 and signed by R. C. (Robert Cecil) in which Cecil announces that he has transcribed “the speaches delivered by the Queene’s most excellent maisestie in a late and weightie cause dealt in this parliament” together with the “petitions presented to hir Maiestie and the 12th and 24th of November at Richmond by the Lord Chauncelour and Speaker.”

In the first petition, Elizabeth is urged to take action against the Scottish Queen for her traitorous actions. A number of “divers apparent and imminent dangers that may grow to her Maiesties most royal person and her realme” are enumerated. Chief among these are Mary’s confessed complicity in the plot of Anthony Babbington to assassinate the queen, as well as her intention to return England “into the thralldome of Popish tyrannie.”


“She is obdurate in malice against your royall person, notwithstanding you have shewed her all fauour and mercie, as well in preseruing her kingome, as saving her life, and faluing her honour. And therefore there is no place for mercie; since there is no hope that shee will desist from most wicked attempts…”

The first petition is followed by Elizabeth’s response, in which she promises to give the matter “due consideration” but declines to offer an immediate resolution: “I haue had goode experience and tryall of this world: I know what it is to be subiect, what to be Soueraigne: what to haue good neighbors, and sometime meete euill willers. I haue founde treason in trust, seene great benefits litle regarded, & in stead of gratefulness, courses of purpose to crosse. These former remembrances, present feeling and future expectation of euils, I say, haue made me thinke, An euill, is much the better, the lesse while it endureth: and so, them happiest that are soonest hence: & taught me to beare with a better minde these treasons, then is common to my sexe: yea, with a better heart perhaps, then is in some men.”


“But I must tell you one thing more, that in this last Acte of Parliament you haue brought me to a narowe straight, that I must giue direction for her death, which cannot be to mee but a most grieuous and irksome burthen.”

A few days after this exchange, Elizabeth “in some conflict with herself what to do” asked the Parliament to find “some other way of remedy” than the execution of Mary.

In the resultant second petition (24th November), Parliament announced that further deliberations upon the matter yielded no alternate solution that would ensure the safety of queen and country. The queen was once again urged to authorize Mary’s execution.

Elizabeth, in her second reply, offers “an answere without answere”: “It was of a willing minde & great desire I had, that some other means might be found out, wherein I should have taken more comfort, than in any under thing under the Sunne. And since now it is resolved, that my suretic can not bee established without a Princesse ende, I have just cause to complaine, that I, tho have in my time pardoned so many Rebels, winked at so many treasons, and shoulde nowe be forced to this proceeding, against such a person.”


“…an answere without answere…”

Elizabeth’s equivocal response to the November 24th petition concludes the present work. Soon after, on December 4th, Parliament obtained a public proclamation from Elizabeth of the sentence of death. Mary was executed on February 8th, 1587.

Rare Books copy has contemporary handwritten annotations in the text. In the first, the annotator directs the reader to the confession of Anthony Babington, who had conspired to kill Elizabeth and place Mary, Queen of Scots on the English throne. Babington was captured and executed in 1586, the year that this book appeared. Three other annotations give the names of contemporary owners.

A recent owner, Harlech Brogyntyn, one of the barons of Brogyntyn Hall, a mansion in the parish of Selatyn, northwest of Oswestry in Shropshire, England, left the following note on the flyleaf of the current binding. The estate had been a family home since the sixteenth century. A further note, on the second flyleaf states that the book was “found bound in damaged limp vellum in a bundle in the cellar…”

“This volume is of great historical interest in that it shows the pressure put by both Houses of Parliament on Queen Elizabeth to “eliminate” Mary Queen of Scots in the autumn of 1586. (The actual execution took place in 1587.)

The arguments are set-out (1) by [the Lord Chancellor] for the Lords…much perturbed by the revelation of the “Babington” plot…Queen Elizabeth’s characteristic replies are prefaced by a letter signed R. C. to Lord Leicester. Lord Leicester had been in Flanders during these events and this volume was printed by the “official” printer to acquaint him with what had passed in this matter in his absence.

H”

Sir Robert Owen of Brogyntyn (d. 1698) was a bibliophile who followed a family tradition of patronage of poets and collecting printed English literature. Later family members continued collecting early printed books. The library also had a collection of manuscripts, possibly culled from other estate libraries in the surrounding area. The third Lord Harlech gave thirty Welsh language manuscripts to the National Library of Wales in 1934, making it the largest collection of manuscripts in Welsh at that time. The fourth Lord Harlech gave the National Library another fifty-nine manuscript in 1935 and more in 1945. The remaining manuscripts were purchased from the sixth Lord Harlech in 1993.

Book of the Week — The Riding to Lithend

01 Monday Oct 2018

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We have laid low to earth a mighty chief:
We have laboured harder than on greater deeds,
And maybe won remembrance by the deeds
Of Gunnar when no deed of ours should live;
For this defence of his shall outlast kingdoms
And gather him fame till there are no more men.

The Riding to Lithend
Gordon Bottomley (1874-1948)
Flansham, Sussex: Pear Tree Press, 1909
First edition
PR6003 O67 R5 1909

Gordon Bottomley was influenced by Pre-Raphaelites such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris. Like Morris’s work, Bottomley’s draws on medieval sensibilities. His poetry is driven by a strong command of meter and atmospheric imagery. Like many of the Pre-Raphaelites, Bottomley was a pastoralist, anxious about the Industrial Revolution and the havoc it continued to wreak on the English environment and social equity. Bottomley was known for his verse plays, such as Midsummer Eve and The Riding to Lithend. While he enjoyed some success, his work, like that of many Georgian poets and artists, lost favor after the madness of The Great War. The world no longer swayed to the rhythm of a single heroic death.

James J. Guthrie (1874-1952), a Scotsman raised in London, and, like Bottomley, inspired by William Morris, founded Pear Tree Press in 1899 while he was living at Pear Tree Cottage in Ingrave, Essex, England. Guthrie moved the press to Shorne in Kent, then Harting in Sussex, before settling at Flansham, near Bognor Regis, Sussex in 1907. The first book issued by his Pear Tree Press was Some Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, 1901. Guthrie set type, printed and made drawings and wood engravings for the press. Guthrie made the drawings for The Riding to Lithen, but the book was printed by Arthur Knowles Sabin (1879-1959), also a poet. The same year he printed this book, Sabin took up a post as Keeper at the Victoria and Albert Museum and established his own press.

Presentation copy from Sybil Waller to “Mrs. Fowler.” Sybil Waller was the daughter of Pickford Waller (1849-1930), a bookplate artist and an illustrator for Pear Tree Press. Our copy has the bookplate of Alfred Fowler, author of a publication on bookplates. Fowler’s bookplate here does not appear to be one of Pickford Waller’s. Quarter tan linen over brown paper boards, printed paper label on front cover. Edition of one hundred and twenty copies.

Banned! — Ten Years of Uzbekistan

28 Friday Sep 2018

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“We started a purge of our books. Nanny carried out pail after pailful of ashes. We burnt Radek’s ‘Portraits and Pamphlets,’ Friedland and Slutsky’s ‘History of Western Europe,’ Bukharin’s ‘Political Economy.’ My mother implored me so anxiously to get rid of Kautsky’s ‘History of Modern Socialism’ as well, that I gave in. Day by day the ‘Index’ grew longer, and the scale of our auto-da-fe grander. In the end we even had to burn Stalin’s ‘On the Opposition.’ Under the new dispensation this too had become illegal.” — Evgenia Ginzburg, as quoted in Ten Years of Uzbekistan

Ten Years of Uzbekistan
Ken Campbell (b. 1939) and David King (b. 1943)
London: K. Campbell, 1994
N7433.4 C36 T45 1994 oversize

Artist’s statement: “‘Ten Years of Uzbekistan’ is a collaboration with the photographer David King. During research for his archive on Soviet Art, King discovered a copy of a book designed by Alexander Rodchenko, who had been driven to obliterate, with ink and paint, the names and faces of those in that book who had fallen from the favour of and been destroyed by Stalin. While writing the text King discovered their names and, where possible, their fates. Ten portraits, nine altered by Rodchenko and the tenth of Stalin as an endpaper to Rodchenko’s book, were enlarged and layered over each other in a process of mutual silencing. I surrounded each of the marred faces with a printed frame that reflected both the page margins and, I hoped, the frame of a Russian ikon. This framing device is echoed in the preserving of photographs of the beloved and the dead. The frames were made from thin zinc plate glued to wooden mounts. During the violence of the printing process the zinc started to buckle and shift. The buckling gave strange printing effects. The movement was stopped by firing staples from a gun into the zinc. This produced odd images from the staples: chromosomic; buglike; giving hints of the buttoning of the lip. The same frame, but well ordered, was used to surround the texts of the introduction.

This work stands as witness to the victims of censorship, and to the shame of self-censorship as a strategy of survival. In Russia it is said ‘here we die for it’; meaning poetry.

Printed by polychrome letterpress using woodletter numerals and Monotype Bodoni type. Bound in black cloth in a black cloth slipcase.”

Edition of forty-five copies.

Review: “We find our way into the book rather slowly. The first pages are all-but blank, dominated by rich colours (notably a beautiful, deep but somehow acidic purple), mottled and marbled with others, as if corroded or polluted, each page dominated by broad, flat frame, which simply emphasises the emptiness of what is surrounded; it’s a little like being confronted with a precious silver photo-frame, still testifying to the preciousness of an image which has long since faded into blankness. Even the title, when we eventually reach it, is hard to read, printed in almost the same colour as the background, and partially obliterated by dark rectangles, like the stickers sometimes used by censors; we can just read the impression, coming through from the next page, of the ominous phrase ‘Here we die for it’. As yet, we have no way of making sense of what is, in fact, a sardonic Russian comment on the dangers of poetry.

… Often, in the book, the obscured head is printed with a biographical note, detailing the individual’s accomplishments and fate; sometimes the sense of loss is compounded by the blankness of the entry ‘Exact Fate Unknown’. Sometimes we begin to suspect that the same head has appeared more then once, with different names. Karimov’s blacked-out face creates a black hole so profound that we feel almost anything could be projected onto it, and this begins to emerge as the dominant theme of the whole publication – the one photo has appeared as a symbol of all that is good, and then becomes the repository (with equal lack of justice) of all that is unforgivable.” — Charles Hall, Art Review, London, 1994

Banned! — Letters Concerning the English Nation

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

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“The great Freedom with which Mr. de Voltaire delivers himself in his various Observations, cannot give him any Apprehensions of their being less favourably receiv’d upon that Account, by a judicious People who abhor flattery. The English are pleas’d to have their Faults pointed out to them, because this shews at the same Time, that the Writer is able to distinguish their merit.”

Letters Concerning the English Nation…
Voltaire (1694-1778)
London: Printed for C. Davis…and A. Lyon…, 1733
First edition
PQ2086 L4 E5 1733

Voltaire (nee François-Marie Arouet) fled to England after arguing with powerful French political figures. During his exile, from 1726 to 1728, he learned English, reading the works of William Shakespeare, John Milton, Isaac Newton, and Francis Bacon; and met other British authors such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. The British embraced Voltaire as a victim of France’s political discrimination.

In Letters, Voltaire, with the works of John Locke and Enlightenment authors as his basis, wrote a slur against the French government and the French Roman Catholic Church, calling for political and religious reform. Letters was translated from French into English by John Lockman from a manuscript prepared by Voltaire.

Voltaire wrote about Isaac Newton and his theories in four of the letters. He told the story of the falling apple as the impetus for Newton’s theorem of the law of gravity, the first time this anecdote was told in print.


“…as he was walking one Day in his Garden, and saw some Fruits fall from a Tree, he fell into a profound Meditation on that Gravity, the Cause of which has so long been sought, but in vain, by all the Philosophers, whilst the Vulgar think there is nothing mysterious in it. He said to himself, that from what height soever, in our Hemisphre, those Bodies might descend…Why may not this Power which causes heavy Bodies to descend, and is the same without any sensible Diminution at the remostest Distance from the Center of the Earth, or on the Summits of the highest Mountains; Why, said Sir Isaac, may not this power extend as high as the Moon?”

Voltaire also wrote about William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania as a haven for Quakers.


About this time arose the illustrious William Pen, who establish’d the power of the Quakers in America, and would have made them appear venerable in the eyes of the Europeans, were it possible for mankind to respect virtue, when reveal’d in a ridiculous light…Pen set sail for his new dominions with two ships freighted with Quakers, who follow’d his fortune. The country was then call’d Pensilvania from William Pen, who there founded Philadelphia, now the most flourishing city in that country.”

Letters was published in French in Amsterdam in 1734. It was immediately condemned by the French Parliament. Copies that made it into France were confiscated and burned. A warrant was issued for Voltaire’s arrest. The printer was imprisoned in the Bastille. At the same time, it was a bestseller in England, going through several more editions during the eighteenth century.

It is likely that this English edition was printed by William Bowyer (1699-1777), as the ornaments (the title vignette and tail-pieces) are those used in other of his imprints.

Rare Books copy has the bookplate of Drake Stillman (1910-1993), an emeritus professor of the history of science at the University of Toronto. He published many translations of the works of Galileo and other sixteenth century Italian scientists.

Recommended reading:
Galileo at Work: His Scientific Biography
Stillman Drake
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978
QB36 G2 D69, L1

Telescopes, Tides, and Tactics: A Galilean Dialogue about The Starry Messenger and Systems of the World
Stillman Drake
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983
QB41 G178 D7 1983, L1

Galileo: Pioneer Scientist
Stillman Drake
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990
QB36 G23 D67 1990, L1

Book of the Week — Duineser Elegien

10 Monday Sep 2018

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Who would give ear, among the angelic host,
Were I to cry aloud? and even if one
Amongst them took me swiftly to his heart,
I should dissolve before his strength of being.
For beauty’s nothing but the birth of terror,
Which we endure but barely, and, enduring,
Must wonder at it, in that it disdains
To compass our destruction, every angel
Is terrible, and thus in self-control
I crush the appeal that rises with my sobs.

Duineser Elegien
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
London: Printed for the Hogarth Press, 1931
First edition in English

From the translator’s note: “Something remains to be said of the actual content of the poem (for it is really a single poem in ten sections). This is admittedly exceedingly complex and arcane, and will not yield to a first, or even to a second reading. For Rilke’s poetry is of the metaphysical order and consists for the most part of an elaborate alchemy of hypostatised ideas, in the expression of which the invention of grammatical quips and subtleties plays…is an important part. His imagination seems naturally to have dealt in visions of embodied abstractions, and…he pushed the vision as far as possible, creating detailed landscapes and humanities of abstract categories…”


But tell me, who are these itinerants,
These fugitives more hasty than ourselves,
Urgently driven from the start, — by whom?
To gratify what discontented will?

From the colophon: “Count Harry Kessler planned the format of this volume. Eric Gill designed and himself cut on wood the initials. The Italic type was designed by Edward Johnston and cut by E. Prince and G. T. Friend. The paper was made by a hand process devised in joint research by Count Harry Kessler and Gaspard and Aristide Maillol. The book was printed in the winter and spring of 1931. Count Harry Kessler and Max Goertz supervised the work of setting the type and printing. Compositors: Walter Tanz and Hans Schulze. Pressman: Willi Laste.

The book was printed for the Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square, London W. C. 1, and both the English and the German texts were reproduced by the courtesy of Insel-Verlag in Leipzig who are also the Agents for the book in Germany.

The whole edition consists of two hundred and thirty numbered copies for sale on handmade Maillol-Kessler paper with the watermark of the Cranach Press, and signed by the translators; and eight numbered copies on vellum for sale with hand-gilded initials, signed by the translators. This is copy Nr. 63.”

Book of the Week — Blitz: Letters from London September and October 1940

07 Friday Sep 2018

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“I will not try to describe the horrid sight of houses spilled across the streets instead of standing upright, of gunfire and screaming and whistling bombs, while we sit in the basement feeling it must be us next.”

Blitz: Letters from London September and October 1940
Evelyn Lister, Susan Allix
London, 2014

On September 7, 1940 the German Luftwaffe began bombing London and other British cities for over 50 consecutive nights.

From the artist’s statement: “As it will never be possible to have this same experience, designing the book seemed sometimes similar to creating an historical novel. Descriptions, film, artifacts and related reconstructions can help to provide brief windows and snapshots of the time…”

From the colophon: “The letters between Mildred, ‘Billie,’ and Evelyn, “Ana,’ are selected from a small collection that came to light when Billie died. They are accompanied here by later prints and photographs. Of the 5 photographs, 3 were taken in the early 1960s with a ‘box Brownie’ camera. The handwriting is reproduced from the original letters. The aquatints, printed in black and brown with hand colouring, are from drawings made at demolition sites and in the underground. The burning and smoking give different results on each copy. The letterpress is hand set and printed in 18pt. Grotesque 215 with 12pt. Grotesque Italic and 18pt. Granby Light Italic. The paper is Saunders Waterford.”

Bound in black goatskin and light brown textured handmade paper, with morocco, reversed leather, and metallic onlays. Issued in slate gray cloth clamshell slipcase. Edition of fifteen copies. Rare Books copy is no. 14, signed by the artist/bookmaker, Susan Allix.


“Earls Court tube is full of poor folk at night, with rugs and eats spread out on the platform; it’s an awful sight as you know how stuffy and dirty the deep undergrounds are, and all the people bring their little children with them.”


“You’ll have some idea of the state of the collapse and debris when I tell you that there are still 4 bodies that they can’t reach…”

Somewhere in the world, something similar is happening now.

Book of the week — Of the Small Silver-Coloured Book-Worm

20 Monday Aug 2018

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This Animal probably feeds upon the Paper and covers of Books, and perforates in them several small round holes, finding, perhaps, a convenient nourishment in those hulks of Hemp and Flax, which have pass’d through so many scourings, washings, dressings and dryings, as the parts of old Paper must necessarily have suffer’d; the digestive faculty, it seems, of these little creatures being able yet further to work upon those stubborn parts, and reduce them into another form. — Robert Hooke

Of the Small Silver-Coloured Book-Worm
Robert Hooke (1635-1703)
Northampton, MA: Catawba Press, 1980
Z701 H66 1980

From Robert Hooke’s “Observation LII” from Micrographia… London, Printed by John Martyn and James Allestry, 1665. Illustrated with a wood engraving by Abigail Rorer. Handsewn binding covered with marbled paper wrappers by Don Guyot. Edition of one hundred and seventy-five copies. Rare Books copy is no. 155.

Welcome back, scholars!

Book of the Week — Platōnos epta eklektoi dialogoi

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

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“Books are immortal sons defying their sires.” — Plato

Platōnos epta eklektoi dialogoi
Plato
Dublinii: E typographia academiae, MDCCXXXVIII [1738]
PA4279 A3 1738

This is the first book printed at Trinity College’s printing house, built in 1734, and the first complete Greek text printed in Ireland. Thirty copies were printed on large paper and specially bound as gifts for important people, while the remaining seven hundred and fifty copies were awarded as prizes for the best answers at examinations.

This copy was presented in 1752 and was likely bound at Joseph Leathley’s Binder. The style is similar and the leather identical to many of this shop’s bindings.

In 1735, London booksellers lodged an official complaint that the Dublin book trade was undercutting London book-prices. Given the choice of a London “original” or a Dublin reprint at the same price, Irish readers often chose the former, except in times of patriotic boycott of English goods. The driving force behind choice, however, was cost. Foreign and colonial customers also preferred London imprints, but only if Dublin imprints were equally priced.

English booksellers objected to Dublin booksellers for the obvious: they spoiled the market for English editions in Ireland, and illegally imported copies threatened sales in English provinces and, to some extent, in English colonies. In 1709, the English Copyright Act allowed the reprinting of works first issued in other countries. This opened the trade considerably for Dublin printers. Throughout the 18th century, London booksellers resented the ensuing competition and often accused Dublin of piracy.

While this edition was clearly not a threat to retail commerce, Trinity College’s printing house took jobs away from English printers.

University of Utah copy bound in contemporary sprinkled calf with gilt device of Trinity College on both covers; gilt spine with raised bands, decorated with star, spade, and wavy line tools. Edition of one thousand copies.

A Patron’s Family History Research Sheds Light on 17th Century Printing

26 Thursday Jul 2018

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It is a matter of just displeasure to God, and sad grief of heart to the church, when civil states look at the estate of the church, as of little, or no concernment to themselves.

The bloudy tenent washed and made white in the bloud of the Lambe
John Cotton (1584-1652)
London: Printed by Matthew Symmons for Hannah Allen, at the Crowne in Popes Head-Alley, 1647
First edition
BV741 W58 C6

English Puritan preacher John Cotton fled to Boston, Massachusetts in 1633 to evade persecution by Anglican Church authorities. In the colony he became an advocate of decentralizing the church and allowing individual congregations to govern themselves. Cotton defended a rule that allowed only church members in good standing to vote and hold office in the colonial government and condemned the idea of democracy in which policy decisions were made in popular assemblies.

When Cotton arrived in Boston, Roger Williams was already in trouble with religious and political authorities. In 1635 he was convicted of heresy and spreading “new and dangerous ideas” and banished. Williams, supporter of religious freedom, separation of church and state; abolitionist; and ally to the American Indian, thought that the Puritans had not gone far enough in separating themselves from the beliefs and practices of the Church of England. Williams identified John Cotton with the Massachusetts Puritans and his tormentors, and his important tract on religious liberty, The Bloudy Tenent, was framed as a critique of Cotton. Cotton responded with his own Bloudy Tenent, a point-by-point rebuttal of Williams and a defense of the institution of the church. Cotton argued that the allowance of religious tolerance would give church members the sense that they could stray from a narrow path created by God.


And the Lord Jesus Christ himself (the God of Truth) who came into the world, that he might beare witnesse to the Truth, be pleased to beare witnesse from Heaven to his owne Truth and blast that peace (a fraudulent and false peace) which the Examiner proclaimeth to all the wayes of fashood in Religion, to Heresie in Doctrine, to Idolatry in worship, to blasphemy of the great Name of God, to Pollution, and prophanation of all his holy Ordinances. Amen, Even So, Come Lord Jesus

While visiting Special Collections from Plano, Texas in 2009, Craig Dalley perused The Feminine Touch, a Rare Books exhibition then installed in the Special Collections Gallery. In the exhibition was The Bloudy Tenent, a book he recognized as being printed by one of his distant ancestors. He published an article in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register (Volume 170, Winter 2016), “Religious and Political Radicalism in London: The Family of Thomas Howse, with Massachusetts Connections, 1642-1665,” which includes a discussion of Hannah Howse Allen Chapman (ca. 1614-ca. 1665), a printer and the publisher of the above book. Last week, Mr. Dalley visited us again and graciously gave us a copy of this issue for our collection.

Hannah Howse’s first husband, Benjamin Allen (ca. 1596 – ca. 1646), had published at least two pamphlets along Puritan separatist lines. Hannah continued printing and publishing separatist material with her second husband, Livewell Chapman (ca. 1625 – ca. 1665).

In 1642, “Parliament declared a book published by Benjamin to be heretical and ordered it to be burned by the hangman. Benjamin died the following year, and Hannah ran the publishing business from his death until her remarriage in 1651. Hannah freed her apprentice, Livewell Chapman…in 1650 and married him by September 1651. During the five years that Hannah ran the business, she published at least fifty-four books and pamphlets and extended the business in a radical direction. Hannah’s second husband, Livewell Chapman, became the leading publisher of the radical Fifth Monarchist sect.”

Chapman was arrested several times for his publishing efforts. “…Livewell published so much anti-Cromwellian material that ‘his share of responsibility for the change of government [when Cromwell was deposed] may well have been considerable.'” In 1660, Livewell was accused of publishing treasonous books and imprisoned. His condition for release “included that he would not ‘att any time hereafter by or with the consent & privity of his Wife, or any other person whatsoever, print, publish, disperse, vend, or sell or cause to be printed, published, dispersed, vended or sold any unlicenced, treasonable, factious or seditious Booke or Pamphlet.'”

Printing and publishing was dangerous business. “Hannah and her husbands were considered to be radicals throughout their lives, regardless of who was at the helm of the government. They fared no better after the execution of Charles I than they had before the overthrow of the monarchy, or than they did after the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II.”

Mr. Dalley concludes, “Hannah Chapman…was a radical publisher whose husbands suffered continual legal troubles — before, during, and after the Protectorate — because of their publishing activities.” Amongst Mr. Dalley’s ancestors, he discovers “a circle of family and friends who were considered to be political and religious radicals.”

Mr. Dalley is an engineer who started his career working on the Hubble Space Telescope. He has researched John Lothrop, his London congregation, and allied families for about twenty years and is planning a book to document his Lothrop research.

Thank you, Mr. Dalley, for bringing life to this 371 year-old book.

Book of the Week — A Journey Over Land: from the Gulf of Honduras to the Great South-Sea…

23 Monday Jul 2018

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There needs no Apology in Behalf of Books of this Nature; they have, at all times, been favourably received, and never rejected, but upon plain and undeniable Conviction of Insincerity. They agreeably amuse, and usefully instruct; and are consequently relished by Readers of every sort. They are pleasing to those, who, at every turn, would be surprised with extraordinary Events, unexpected Accidents, and miraculous Deliverances; and acceptable to those, who, moving in a loftier Sphere, are desirous of converting all they know to public Use; and these, regardless of what the former most admire, are particularly sollicitous after Descriptions and Accounts of Persons, Places and things. — from the preface, A Journey Over Land

A Journey Over Land: From the Gulf of Honduras to the Great South-Sea…
John Cockburn
London: Printed for C. Rivington, at the Bible and Crown in St. Paul’s Church-yard, M.DCC.XXXV (1735)
First edition
F1431 C66 1735

This narrative, so fantastic, was long considered to be a work of fiction pretending to be fact. John Cockburn tells a tale of extraordinary and harrowing adventure, beginning when he and his crew were overtaken off the coast of Jamaica by another ship, “…mostly Spaniards, and commanded by Captain Johnson the Pirate, an Englishman, and Pedor Poleas a Spaniard” in 1730. The surviving crew escaped from jail in San Pedro Sula in Honduras, crossed the Isthmus to San Salvador and traveled to Panama overland.

“This was the first setting out of a Journey, as we computed, through an unknown Tract of Land, (at least to us) which took us up ten Months, and I may say some times proved insupportable; for we were all the while exposed to many Dangers, and underwent many Hardships, as was possible for human Nature to sustain.” In his book, Cockburn described vegetation; animals; insects; and wrote short but vivid stories about the governments, dress, characteristics and customs of the descendants of the great Mayan empire and other native peoples (many of whom were at war with each other).

Cockburn mentions food, because it was so scare, continually, writing about corn (“Turtillias,” “Tamawlas”), plantains, fowl, berries, lizards, milk, honey, eggs, and “At last, we spy’d a Lady, in one House, very well dressed, to whom we went and begg’d her Charity. She presently made Chocolate, giving us plentifully of it, which was more acceptable to us at that Time, than Gold…”

Tobacco was second only to chocolate in its desirability: “These Gentlemen gave us some Seegars to smoke, which they supposed would be very acceptable. These are Leaves of Tobacco rolled up in such Manner, that they serve both for the Pipe and Tobacco itself. These the Ladies, as well as Gentlemen, are very fond of Smoking.”

The book was re-printed many times. A folding map depicts Central America and the Isthmus of Panama.

The edition is appended with A Briefe Discoverye of Some Things best worth Noteing in the Travells of… a popular travel narrative by Nicholas Withington, who arrived in India in 1612.